Although social capital has been researched from many approaches and attempts have been made to measure it online, the literature lacks an operational description that would allow its measurement criteria to be established from a social network perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify in the literature what metrics researchers use to measure social capital on social networking sites from a social network perspective. Thus, this contribution offers a theoretical description of the key elements for measuring social capital in social networking sites, which may be useful in subsequent studies.

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to adapt the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to predict the use and intended use of e-learning systems among undergraduate students at a state university in Ecuador, with the intention of improving the understanding of those factors that could enhance the utilization of these systems and the implementation of policies to increase the benefits they bring to the process of teaching and learning.Design/methodology: The analysis has epistemological basis on the empirical-inductive, based on observation of perception. Based on the literature review on the evaluation and acceptance of e-learning systems, the model has been adapted to the case of Ecuador and a questionnaire with 52 items based on Likert scales was developed. The instrument was emailed to 600 undergraduate students from a state university in Ecuador, being 423 of them answered satisfactorily. We performed validity and reliability tests of structural equation model by partial least squares (PLS), with the support of statistical software SmartPLS.Contributions and results: The results indicate that all the hypotheses of TAM are met in the Ecuadorian context, when assessing the acceptance of e-learning systems among undergraduate students at a state university. The main contribution was to identify that the perceived enjoyment, social influence and computer self-efficacy have a direct effect on the two main constructs of TAM, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU). It was also found that satisfaction (S) is highly influenced by PU and S influences the use of e-learning systems, being the first a specific contribution of this study. Technical support showed no influence on the fundamental constructs of TAM.Limitations: The research was conducted to undergraduate students in one state Category B university of Ecuador, being the reality of this country more complex, as there are four categories with different characteristics. We haven’t considered neither age, gender, graduate students nor socioeconomic status, among other student characteristics that may affect the investigation.Practical implications: Identifying the factors that influence the acceptance and use of e-learning systems will help to create and improve teaching and learning environments for undergraduate students. Allowing exploiting the benefits of these technological tools more efficiently, adapting them to management policies of the institutions of higher education.Originality/value: This paper presents empirical data on the use and acceptance of e-learning systems for undergraduate students of a particular university in Ecuador. No similar studies are evident in the country and the model can be considered for future studies of national scope.

This article examines educational policies in Ecuador. It outlines the main features of the education and training systems, and analyses the impact on productivity and national development. The efforts made by various national authorities to strengthen and encourage education at all levels is evident, as well as efforts to boost productivity by changing the productive mix. In conclusion, much effort has been made to move from an economy of finite resources based on the exploitation of natural resources, to an economy of infinite resources focused on generating knowledge.

This paper explores the communication strategy that can generate social capital when a business cluster publishes and interacts on the X platform (formerly Twitter). The methodology follows a replicable process, in which data were collected directly from the platform and analysed at the level of content according to communication characteristics and at the level of interactions represented by mentions given or received. The interaction network was constructed to extract more information to calculate social capital. Communication variables are strategies that group communication characteristics. A conceptual model was proposed: it was evaluated by the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique, and its predictive capability was studied using PLSpredict. The results indicate explanatory effects among the variables analysed and high predictive power for the dependent variables of the proposed model. This suggests that designing communication strategies and prioritizing specific characteristics, can improve the performance of social capital. This work highlights implications and opportunities for future studies that could provide value in decision-making among marketing academics and practitioners.

This paper aims to examine how companies in a cluster communicate their activities on X-platform (formerly Twitter). Three main tasks were considered in this study: 1) an analysis of Tweet (formerly tweet) level messages according to the subject matter posted; 2) an analysis of the messages at the tweet level in terms of the communication design; 3) an analysis of the affective connotation of the language used in each message. We examined a sample of tweets posted for one year by member companies of a Social Impact cluster. The results indicate that the cluster companies use X-platform (formerly Twitter) to communicate their corporate activities with a weekly frequency that ranges from 5 to 182 posts. The analysis of the messages shows that i) there is a predominance of posts referring to corporate products and services as opposed to corporate social responsibility; ii) companies post to create community; and, iii) graphic and audio-visual resources within the content of the posts are predominant. The results have both practical and academic implications, which can be used to develop strategies for companies to take advantage of the social networking site's capabilities or tools and develop plans for building strong relationships with their audience.